Struts Kick Start 134
| Struts Kick Start | |
| author | James Turner and Kevin Bedell |
| pages | 481 (29 page index) |
| publisher | Sams |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Simon P. Chappell |
| ISBN | 0672324725 |
| summary | You need this book |
What is Struts?
Struts is a framework for developing web applications. It is a distilation of the current set of known best practices into a working code set that can be extended to meet almost any web application requirements. It part of the Jakarta Project at the Apache Software Foundation.
What do I know about Struts?
I have been developing web applications, using Java, for four years and using struts for over a year, and am a regular participant on the Struts mailing list. I was also a technical reviewer for one of the other Struts Books released this fall and was recently invited to speak at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire on the use of Struts.
What's good about this book?
There are many excellent things that I could point to. I particularly like the obvious depth of research that accompanies this book. There is a very interesting history of the development of the MVC design pattern and they even name the inventor. Do you know who invented MVC? If you want to know, buy the book! The chapters cover everything that you will need to know, in the order you are most likely to need to know it. There's even a chapter explaining the "struts-config.xml" file's DTD! (You may want to skip that on the first few readings :-)There is good coverage of the Struts taglibs. I see a lot of questions about these on the mailing lists, so this information is very timely and it looks very well explained.
I like the coverage of other open source tools that work well with Struts. This is an important point because Struts does not do everything for you (by design), so there will be areas that will benefit from other tools. I'm looking forward to trying out some of their recommendations and easing my own Struts development lifecycles.
What's not so good?
Just one niggle, and it's more of a programming style issue, but in their example code they have references to their business objects. They explain that it is important to separate out business logic from action logic, which it is, but then proceed to use their business object within the action.Now, I realise that example code is not the same thing as robust, production-ready code, but when people are first learning a language or framework, they tend to copy exactly what they see in the book they are learning from. Even though example code should be light on error checking, it should be heavy on correctness and good style.
Should you rush out and buy it?
If you are about to use Struts on a project, are new to Struts and need dead tree documentation for those RTFM moments or are evaluating Struts for future projects, then you absolutely need this book.If you are an intermediate Struts user, then this book would still be very useful to you and I can certainly recommend it.
If you are an experienced Struts user, then you've almost certainly exchanged emails with James or Kevin, on the Struts mailing list, so you can make your own mind up!
Table of Contents
- Struts in Context
- The Model-View-Controller Design Pattern
- Hello World!
- HTTP Protocol
- JSP, Taglibs and JSTL
- The Sample Application
- View Components
- The Controller
- Model Components
- The struts-config.xml File
- How the Struts Tag Libraries Work
- Struts HTML Tags
- Struts Bean Tags
- Struts Logic Tags
- The Nested and Template Struts Tag Libraries
- The Struts Tiles Tag Library
- DynaForms and the Validator
- Using Struts with Enterprise Java Beans
- Using Struts with Web Services
- Building, Deploying and Testing Struts Applications
You can purchase Struts Kick Start from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Struts? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Struts? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure if this is a troll, or intended to be funny . . . but it works on both levels I suppose.
Anyhow, I've been using Struts for about a month refactoring a largish internal Oracle PL/SQL web app, and the MVC separation that's enforced by the Struts framework is really just what the doctor ordered. I'm getting similar functionality in roughly 20% of the comparable lines of code; and this is early enough in the project to where code reuse hasn't even come into play much. I'd imagine it'll end up at about 15% - i.e., 150K LOC using struts as opposed to about a million LOC using PL/SQL.
I know Lines of Code isn't necessarily a good measure of just about anything - but the real benefit is maintainability and ease of expansion (which is what brought on this refactoring to begin with).
Struts is really worth a long hard look - gets you away from using the technologies above and into a real enterprise-class web application structure.
Heh (Score:2)
Show the full respect of Struts... (Score:1)
I think Struts has a very bright future...
Re:Show the full respect of Struts... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Show the full respect of Struts... (Score:3, Insightful)
As you get going, there becomes a more elegant technique to using teh language. Tools like struts fill the need.
Learn what you can now and don't worry about it, the usefullness of struts will become evident as you progress.
Re:Show the full respect of Struts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well of course it's going to be faster and easier (for you) to just put all of the code in scriptlets. But I sure wouldn't want to have to maintain your code. You don't separate your business logic from your display code because it's faster to develop it; you separate your code to make it easier to maintain, and more robust. Writing maintainable code is always going to be a bit more work in the short term, but it pays off over the long term.
MVC (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not quite tired yet.... (Score:1)
Re:MVC (Score:1)
Al Gore's the devil.
Re:MVC (Score:1, Offtopic)
It's NYE and you are all trolls.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
You see, the problem is that no one cares. It's a funny story that doesn't really hurt anyone. Pointing out that it's technically wrong is like watching a movie and pointing out things that are impossible.
It's just annoying.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Well it probably hurts him. It also probably hurts his family. It may well have cost him the election (it was a close one after all) and as a consequence has hurt lots and lots of people. Maybe, just maybe there would be less dead people in the world if that lie was not so widely circulated.
Even if it did not hurt anybody then it's still a lie and should be corrected whenever possible.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
I doubt it hurts his family...at all.
It may have cost him the election? It may have gotten him votes. After all, if he invented the Internet, he must be a pretty smart guy.
You don't like to see your canidate look stupid. That's understandable. Let me know when you start protesting when people go "George Dubya Bush".
Re:MVC (Score:2)
And you know this how?
"It may have cost him the election? It may have gotten him votes. After all, if he invented the Internet, he must be a pretty smart guy."
Which scenario is more likely?
"You don't like to see your canidate look stupid. That's understandable. Let me know when you start protesting when people go "George Dubya Bush"."
He himself pronounces it dubya. What you want me to do correct him?
Re:MVC (Score:2)
The same way you know that it "Probably hurts his family." Don't apply levels of proof to me that you are not willing to apply to yourself.
"Which scenario is more likely?"
Nobody knows.
"He himself pronounces it dubya. What you want me to do correct him?"
I was going to respond to that question phonetically, but that requires too much effort and I doubt you'd get the point.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Nobody knows.
----
Just goes to show how idiologically rigid people are incapable of coming to any conclusion which may conflict with their religious beliefs.
The rebuclicans invented the lie and propagated it to HURT him both personally and in the election. In fact I saw John Sununu repeat that lie on tv (hardball IIRC) and follow it with the phrase "not only is Al Gore a liar he is a stupid liar".
How can you possibly think that propagating this lie over and over by prominent republicans and the republican media had an indeterminate effect. Rush Limbaugh, Bill Oreilly, Fox TV, CNBC and the wall street journal wield incredible power, certainly enough to make a less then one percent difference in a close election.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Or...
Two groups of people who are ideologically opposed to each other will pick up anything that sounds true, as long as it trashes the other side.
"Sir! Did you hear that Al Gore is claiming that he invented the internet?"
'What? Did he?'
"No! I was invented by the military!"
'Ha! We got him on that one! Start running the presses!'
"Just goes to show how ideologically rigid people are incapable of coming to any conclusion which may conflict with their religious beliefs."
Ok, now you're just trolling. What does a person's religious beliefs have to do with this?
Re:MVC (Score:2)
I don't dispute this. What I dispute is your contention that continually lying to the public by the republican party about what Al Gore said has either
a) Had no effect on the election
b) Had a beneficial effect for Al Gore in the election.
You claimed both of these because you can not admit that a continual repeating of this lie could have made a difference in the outcome of the election (and therefore making profound difference in the world).
Not only that but you are incapable of admitting that lying about somebody is probably hurtful to them and their family.
Because of the rigidity introduced into your thinking process by strict adherence to an idiology your mind is incapable of coming to conclusions which may cause dissonance with that idology or point out that the idiology (and the idiological leaders) may end up using sleazy means to achieve their ends.
You insist that that it was a "harmless lie" and that it did not "hurt anybody". Any logical person would have to conclude that it was not a harmless lie because in a close election there is a high probability that it had an effect on the election and that it not only hurt Gore family but because of it's effect on the election it hurt all democrats.
Of course I can't see a Gore presidency being so indefferent to the plight of the palestenians and declaring a war on Iraq so you could theoretically add the upcoming deaths of tens of thousands of iraquis to the list of people hurt by that "harmless lie".
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Actually, I can't believe that the continual repeating of a stupid joke would make a difference in the outcome of an election. Considering that Gore didn't do anything to make sure that voting machine fiasco didn't happen again, makes me think that he didn't care either.
"Not only that but you are incapable of admitting that lying about somebody is probably hurtful to them and their family."
Lies are part of politics. If this one stupid joke wreaks havoc on the Gore family, then they're dead meat when the professional lies and spin comes along.
"You insist that that it was a "harmless lie" and that it did not "hurt anybody". Any logical person would have to conclude that it was not a harmless lie because in a close election there is a high probability that it had an effect on the election and that it not only hurt Gore family but because of it's effect on the election it hurt all democrats."
Any logical person would like a bit more proof than "You think it sounds right." Normally, I'd be happy to chew on that concept with you. Except that when I put forth my theory, you suddenly wanted proof. So fine, if you want to be like that, bring me proof that it had an effect on the election. You have NO IDEA what people use as a criteria for voting, and giving the impression that you know what they do is a lie.
"Of course I can't see a Gore presidency being so indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians and declaring a war on Iraq so you could theoretically add the upcoming deaths of tens of thousands of iraquis to the list of people hurt by that "harmless lie"."
The Palestinians have been in this "Plight" for how long? 30 years? And despite the constant aid from many western nations and the UN, they have barely improved. Maybe trying something different, like Bush is doing, is the key to fixing the problems. You're right though, Gore probably would of continued to push the same policies that don't work, causing no improvement in the situation. What bold leadership!
As to the "Tens of Thousands" that will die in Iraq from the future attack. Is that the total, or the people that Sadamm takes down with him as he invades? It's probably just a rumor that he's been planting chemical bombs in his own cities for the US invasion. After all, he wouldn't kill his own people, would he?
But I'm glad you're here to stick up for Tyranny. That no matter how bad other people have it, or how much our interests are threatened, you're here to let us know that we shouldn't do anything to solve it, if it involves people dying.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Once again this is due to your idioogical inflexibility. The race was decided by a few hundred votes. It is reasonably probable that repeatedly lying about Al Gore would have influenced a few hundred people (which represents a minute percentage of the voting population).
"Considering that Gore didn't do anything to make sure that voting machine fiasco didn't happen again, makes me think that he didn't care either."
He had no power to effect any change. If he had become the president then he would have had the power to do somthing about it. As a private citizen there was very little he could do. There was a class action suit in florida about denying black people the vote by wiping them off the rolls as felons and florida paid a bunch of money to a bunch of folks. As far as I know that was only real consequence for rigging the election.
"Lies are part of politics. If this one stupid joke wreaks havoc on the Gore family, then they're dead meat when the professional lies and spin comes along."
I did not say that it "wreaked havoc" I only said that it hurt them. Again your idiological inflexilibity prevents you from admitting what most people understand very well. Telling lies about people hurts them, making fun of people hurts them. Maybe like you say it's OK to hurt people a little or maybe it's OK to hurt Al Gore a little, maybe it's ok to hurt people as much as possible but not enough to "wreak havoc" with them. I really don't know where you are coming from in this regard. Even if you think it's OK to hurt Al Gore by lying about it (despite what the ten commandments says about bearing false witness) at least admit that it did most probably did hurt him.
"The Palestinians have been in this "Plight" for how long? 30 years? And despite the constant aid from many western nations and the UN, they have barely improved. Maybe trying something different, like Bush is doing, is the key to fixing the problems."
Well I don't want to get into a detail discussion about the plight of the palestenians here but I don't think anybody would agree that they are better off under a bush presidency then they were under any other administration. You are right for the last 30 years they have been suffering miserably under a military occupation by Israel but only in the last couple of years has that been compounded by widespread malnutrition and starvation.
"You're right though, Gore probably would of continued to push the same policies that don't work, causing no improvement in the situation. What bold leadership!"
IT might not have improved the situation but then again I bet most palestenians would have prefered their previous miserable conditions to their present event more miserable conditions. Sometimes staying where you are is better then losing ground.
"As to the "Tens of Thousands" that will die in Iraq from the future attack. Is that the total, or the people that Sadamm takes down with him as he invades?"
I am only counting the deaths that will be caused by our own bombing. Last time we attacked them we killed over 50,000 people and of course more died as a result of our destruction of crucial infrastructure such as electricy generation facilities, water treatment plants, roads and bridges and such. We also killed something like 30,000 people in afghanistan. I am presuming that we will kill at least 10,000 people in Iraq which is a very conservative estimate. Saddam might also kill some people while retreating or as a scortched earth last defense type of situation. Either way it's totally unnecessary. If we decided not to invade both types of deaths could be avoided. This war with iraq is very avoidable.
"It's probably just a rumor that he's been planting chemical bombs in his own cities for the US invasion. After all, he wouldn't kill his own people, would he?"
If we did not invade then he would have no need to deploy those weapons.
"But I'm glad you're here to stick up for Tyranny."
I am doing no such thing. Try another line of attack if you want to. Lying is not an effective argument method. You can not simply try to demonize whoever you are arguing with and make yourself right. The truth does not work that way.
"That no matter how bad other people have it, or how much our interests are threatened, you're here to let us know that we shouldn't do anything to solve it, if it involves people dying."
What a fine sentiment except that it's a non sequitor. We have no interests there except oil and I for one believe that's it's wrong to kill people and take their stuff even if that stuff is oil. You apparently also think the only way to solve whatever problem you perceive is by killing lots of iraquis and militarily occupying their country. I for one believe that there are many many other options. Any solution to whatever problem you perceive has to make the situation better for the people who "have it bad".
State the problem, consider the available options and choose the one with causes the least amount of harm. So far I have not even heard what the problem actually is.
If it is weapons of mass destruction then we should deal with it like we deal with other countries that have weapons of mass destruction.
If the iraqui people are suffering (and they are) then let's try to help them.
I have also heard people point out that Saddam has killed his own people (well they were kurds and he does not view them as his own people but that's beside the point). The fact is however that the US govt had no objection to that when it happened and it's a bit silly to have any objection to it now that's too late. In fact we gave him the knowhow and the technology to do that in the first place. What he did was evil and it should have been dealt with then.
Re:MVC (Score:2)
Out of curiosity, what brand of ideology do I subscribe to? I'm just curious as to where you've pigeonholed me.
"He had no power to effect any change. If he had become the president then he would have had the power to do something about it. As a private citizen there was very little he could do."
Interesting. I was told that when Nixon lost the presidential election to Kennedy in Chicago due to voter fraud, he was furious. And then he fixed the system so it couldn't happen again. So, either I was lied to or you're wrong.
"Telling lies about people hurts them; making fun of people hurts them."
You ate 38 jelly beans for breakfast.
Your momma is so fat; when she ran away she took up all four sides of the milk carton.
Bill Clinton dyed his hair bright purple and joined a heavy metal band.
All three statements above are a lie. Are you hurt? Is your mother hurt? Is Bill Clinton hurt?
No.
"Well I don't want to get into a detail discussion about the plight of the Palestinians here..."
Seriously? Then don't bring up such a hot topic. It forces me to address it with a rebuttal. Otherwise it looks like I'm conceding your point.
"
I am only counting the deaths that will be caused by our own bombing. Last time we attacked them we killed over 50,000 people and of course more died as a result of our destruction of crucial infrastructure such as electric generation facilities, water treatment plants, roads and bridges and such. We also killed something like 30,000 people in Afghanistan. I am presuming that we will kill at least 10,000 people in Iraq which is a very conservative estimate. "
I've had a VERY hard time getting consistent numbers about the gulf war. Civilian deaths have gone from 30k a WEEK during the war to less than a thousand for the whole war. But I find it hard to believe that we directly bombed civilians to the tune of 30k deaths. The sheer amount of effort and ammo required to kill that many people would not go unnoticed.
"If we did not invade then he would have no need to deploy those weapons."
And this is the most ridiculous statement you've made so far. Not even Hitler came up with the idea of killing his own people as a deterrent against invasion. It's monstrous if true and would be reason enough to depose the rulers of Iraq.
At what point do you think it's appropriate to invade another country?
"I am doing no such thing. Try another line of attack if you want to. Lying is not an effective argument method."
Excuse me? Your agreements show that you don't believe in invading Iraq. Currently Iraq is ruled by a cruel dictator. There is only ONE way to improve that country and it's to remove it by force. Any argument to the contrary, even "Well, if Al Gore was president, we wouldn't be invading." is saying that you prefer Sadamm to be in power. Sounds like sticking up for tyranny to me.
"We have no interests there except oil and I for one believe that's it's wrong to kill people and take their stuff even if that stuff is oil."
Lying is not an effective argument method.
"State the problem, consider the available options and choose the one with causes the least amount of harm. So far I have not even heard what the problem actually is."
Seriously? We've fought a war, committed sanctions, and conducted inspections, and enforced no-fly zones and you STILL don't know what the problem is? A big help is to imagine yourself as the leader of the U.S. and withdrawing from Iraq without doing anything. Imagine the ramifications.
"The fact is however that the US govt had no objection to that when it happened and it's a bit silly to have any objection to it now that's too late."
Er, the US didn't have a problem with that. You are who has the problem with civilian causalities(From the Gulf War). And when I pointed out that Sadamm is willing to kill his own people, you switch to the line of argument "Well; now the US can't say anything about Sadamm killing his own people because they didn't say anything when it happened before. And now it's too late."
So, back to where we started from. Gore didn't invent the internet, but it's a cute joke. You say it effected the elections in Florida. I say that the amount of people who voted for Bush because of this, were canceled out by the people who voted for Gore because they liked the color of his tie.
How many people stayed home and didn't go out and vote because they heard that the exit polls on the news telling them that Gore won? I must admit, I wish they did the whole thing over again. The margin of victory was too small for me.
Re:MVC (Score:1, Offtopic)
Little nitpick (Score:4, Informative)
Struts is a framework for developing web applications. It is a distilation of the current set of known best practices into a working code set that can be extended to meet almost any web application requirements. It part of the Jakarta Project at the Apache Software Foundation.
Struts is a Java/J2EE based framework. Although you could change it to use with other languages, it has taglibs and other features that are pretty much Java only.
Why such an influx of Struts books? Its becoming quite the standard in the Java/JSP+servlet world. J2EE developers are still being hired (hear that unemployed CS people?), and have been strong through the IT drought, and Struts experience is an even bigger plus.
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1)
Indeed. Another factor in the championing of structs is its featuring in the toolsets of products like BEA (yes, some may see BEA as a stinking pile of bloatware, but it is rather respected by many enterprise players).
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1)
You're making a fairly large assumption aren't you? - that they're being hired only because they know J2EE technology. I think not. J2EE developers are usually experienced (if not 'software architects' - whatever that means) and that's why they are still being hired. Anyone with 3+ years experience can find a job fairly easily.
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1, Offtopic)
Speaking of fairly large assumptions...
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1)
Re:Little nitpick (Score:2)
I point out the latter as I've interviewed a LOT of people and I've seen lots of great resumes with Java exp and owners of those resumes who look at you blankly when you ask any degree of difficult question...
Re:Little nitpick (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1, Informative)
J2EE = JSP, Servlets, EJB (not just EJB).
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1)
two containers,
three containers,
four.
sure, it will work in the JSP/Servelet container only, but it also works nicely if you're using an EJB container as well.
the main point about struts is that it's a JSP based Model View Controler framework. actions and all that. Turbine/Velocity is another MVC framework that can be usefull if you're using one or two, or three containers. No books that I can see on the latter that i've seen, anyone interested in throwing one together?
Re:Little nitpick (Score:1)
Servlets are just as much a part of the specification.
No idea what it does (Score:3, Insightful)
Should I be using it? Im too unknowledgeable to even know what question to ask. I use EJB, and I have a webapp. I'm just baffled.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:1, Funny)
Re:No idea what it does (Score:3, Informative)
Struts is an MVC-based framework for developing web apps. It helps to separate out the different layers of your application. You could use it with EJBs, if you wish, because it is mostly a means for separating out your business logic from your presentation.
Asking "should I be using it?" is difficult to answer, because it depends upon your requirements. But if you are developing a web application that requires a quick turnaround time and is easy to maintain, Struts will help you along.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:1)
I thought we already had MVC with JSP/servlet/EJB. How does Struts change this? From what I can tell it's some sort of framework that handles form data validation. That's always rather tedious, so if Struts saves time it's a good deal.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:3, Informative)
I thought we already had MVC with JSP/servlet/EJB. How does Struts change this? From what I can tell it's some sort of framework that handles form data validation. That's always rather tedious, so if Struts saves time it's a good deal.
Mmmm.... Part of Struts is validation, although technically it is a separate component. (See the Jakarta Commons Validator [apache.org]) This is a minor (though extremely useful) part of it, however.
What makes Struts what it is are (arguably) ActionForms (basically, JavaBeans with some enhanced functionality) and ActionForwards/ActionMappings. These allow you to separate out the logic which operates upon data which will eventually be diplayed from the actual display of that data. Because solutions which depend upon JSPs tend to become a mass of unreusable scriplets, having this separation allows for a more maintainable site and avoids the pitfalls which have traditionally plagued JSPs.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:1)
I suppose I'd "get it" better if I'd done more JSP development than I have. I guess I'm lacking the context to see how useful this is. I'm hoping to do write a small web tool for myself soon though, so I will read up on this and see if it clicks.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No idea what it does (Score:2)
Re:No idea what it does (Score:2)
Mmmm, kool-aid...
Re:No idea what it does (Score:1)
if there's any bored document writers out there... jakarta and apache really need your donations! any corporations needing an extra tax write off? please donate a doc-writer to these projects.
Re:No idea what it does (Score:2)
I KNOW! Apache seems to make so much usefull stuff, but they never explain what it does! I like nice names as much as the next guy, but apache has so many projects it would really be helpfull if they picked more descriptive ones, I.E. "Apache JSP/Servlet server" rather then "Apache Tomcat".
Struts is great, but... (Score:4, Informative)
I've been working on a reasonably sized project for some time now (still undercover, so can't go into details)... I'd been looking for a good framework to use, and Struts looked like it fitted the bill.
Until I started dealing with the display (view) side of things.
Getting to grips with the Action and ActionForm stuff is simple, and I think that anyone could do it. However, because they expect you to use all the usual standard stuff (taglibs, etc), building new taglibs and dealing with that was going to be a nightmare.
Also, the HTML taglib, when told to output XHTML only, doesn't work. tags like the BASE tag aren't closed properly.
Fortunately, I'd been looking at using Tea earlier on (Jason Hunter uses it at servlets.com [servlets.com]). Someone on the tea mailing list posted a link to a very useful article on using Struts for the backend of a web app and Tea for the front end. You can find it here:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-
Re:Struts is great, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Struts is great, but... (Score:1)
Webmacro: bloody unreadable.
Tea: vastly overkill, a whole new language.
XMLC: overkill in most cases, who wants to have to manipulate the DOM of a parsed page to set a few template variables?
Velocity: plenty good, but it isn't that portable, and it stll looks kinda ugly. All those ### make it impossible to edit templates in GUI webpage editors.
XSLT: ouch!
HTML template [sourceforge.net] hits the spot. Simple, no business logic mangled into the page, can be XML-ly correct, and it's even portable between perl and java.
java server faces (Score:2, Insightful)
Not for a while (Score:3, Informative)
JSF could replace Struts one day, but not for a few years at the least. JSF is still in the early phases, whereas Struts has had several years to mature. I would definately keep an eye on JSF, but wouldn't recommend using it on non-experimental sites for a while.
Re:Not for a while (Score:1)
Re:Not for a while (Score:1)
"If you have existing Struts-based applications that use the existing HTML tag library, feel free to continue to use them if you wish. Struts 1.1 offers full support for this existing functionality.
Once the integration library becomes available, you should do some experimenting and prototyping to determine the effort required to migrate your apps to the new JSF component architecture (I'm betting that the extra functionality you gain by doing this will be well worth the effort in many cases). As described above, the actual migration can be done piecemeal -- it doesn't need to happen all at once.
For applications now (or about to be) under development that have relatively short term schedules (i.e. the next few months), you should probably stick with the existing HTML library.
For applications with a longer lead time, seriously consider waiting for the ability to use JSF components instead of the Struts HTML tag library. Doing this will let you leverage not only the standard HTML components that come with JSF out of the box, but also the rich libraries of JSF components likely to be created by third parties in the future (including Struts developers)."
Re:java server faces (Score:1)
This year, I had to do some
That to say, ASP.NET is (IMHO) quite similar to Struts, only with stronger commercial support.
As for the rest of
(And building j2ee projects with ant rocks.)
Somtimes we've just had to reboot the server and rebuild the project, and it would work. (I guess there are some problems regarding assemblies, but we haven't figured it out). And if someone has uploaded a new build of the system on IIS, and another developer starts up VS.NET, and VS.NET contains an older build in the cache, we have to refresh the project and rebuild. Beats me. It could be the server, but there is no fscking way of finding out. And that is another thing I like with J2EE: The application server is not that closely integrated with the OS, and more easily debugged. Yes, sometimes I have to restart WL or JBoss, but I don't have to reboot the server "just to be sure"
Re:java server faces (Score:1)
I forgot to mention Emacs and JDEE [sunsite.dk].
Setting up JDEE to get all the features can be somewhat intimidating, but worth it. You'll get features like intelligent code completition, easy lookup in the jdk or your own documentation, integration with ant (jdee can parse build.xml and provide completition on build targets etc.) etc. For modelling, I'm trying out Poseidon UML [gentleware.com], which is, AFAIK, based on ArgoUML. (And it is a java app, so it runs on Linux, which I use on my workstation)
Re:was the Struts Kick Start site built with Strut (Score:1)
What the big deal with Struts... (Score:1, Interesting)
Strust is just an implementation of what has already been developed by several companies - I will use Apple as an example. The same sort of thing is done with WebObjects in that the HTML from end and back end Java (or Obj-C) is linked with the need to create any real glue to connect them - it just sort of does it for you - with a nice IDE I might add.
WebObjects (like Struts) allows a developer to connect front end HTML to a server and pass data back and forth so that it's easier to deal with on the server...
Okay so why the rant? Well do you really hear about WebObjects being used all that much, NO! The reason (outside of the fact that when it was a NeXT product it use to cost a forture) it that the learning curve is wicked steep. That is where I see Strust going, it's a great technology, can do all sorts of cool stuff, will ease development but requires some time to get ones head around how it works.
I have seen more than a few projects that claim they use Strust when in fact they use maybe 5% of Strust and still need to use code to glue the front and middle tiers together. It's a real shame that we do not have really nice editor integration - ya ya, I know a few editors have the integration but face it folks, they all suck.
What we need is one of the big guns to step up to the plate and really integrate (and support) struts integration *wink wink* Borland...
Just my
Re:What the big deal with Struts... (Score:1)
Tapestry has a great plugin for Eclipse called "Spindle".
The learning curve can be a bit steep, but not as steep as Struts in many ways (I use Struts at my current job, and it was a massive pain for me to shift gears and work within the limitations of Struts).
Meanwhile we're changing the framework and improving the documentation to make Tapestry the easiest to use web framework out there.
Re:What the big deal with Struts... (Score:2)
So how about a quick comparison of Tapestry and Struts? What's easy to do with Tapestry that's hard with Struts?
Tapestry and Struts (Score:1)
First off, I probably shouldn't have even brought up Tapestry, I'm generating a bad reputation for trying to monopolize discussions and steer them towards Tapestry.
Struts rounds off the rough edges of servlet/JSP development. It does a little streamlining, such as creating an abstraction between actions and JSPs. Actions are subclasses of a struts-provided class and are very, very similar to servlets ... in fact, they must be stateless, just like a servlet.
JSPs are called "forwards" and, in fact, the plumbing doesn't require that the output be JSPs, you can plug in other templating systems such as Velocity.
There's standard taglibs that help with creating URLs that reference actions, help with building forms, and there's a system, called form beans, where query parameters are picked up and dumped in as properties of a bean, which is then passed to an action for processing.
That's really about it.
Tapestry is simply a different kind of beast. It's goals are different ... it doesn't round out the edges of the servlet API ... it makes the servlet API irrlevant to the developer. You create Tapestry applications without thinking about URLs, query parameters or any of that jazz. It's all "objects, methods and properties".
Let's take a simple form example. In Struts you would have to
Struts doesn't have any kind of namespace management, so if you are on a a big team, you have to be careful to name things uniquely.
In Tapestry, you would
Although this looks similar, its much easier in Tapestry. Everything you need to do is localized in the three resources of the page (the specification, the template or the class). You write very, very little code ... instead, you declare what you want the framework to do inside the page specification (an XML document), or even inside the HTML template (more like taglibs, and a 2.4 feature in progress right now).
These page specification entries are pretty short, for example:
This says "use a TextField component, bind its value parameter to the name property of the employee property of the page". This assumes that your page class provides a JavaBeans property, "employee". The accessor method knows how to obtain this object from a backend database or EJB.
You and the other developers aren't conflicting on access to struts_config.xml. No change that another developer makes to thier page will break yours. Name conflicts simply can't happen ... each page is like a little application unto itself.
In both frameworks you have to provide the business object to the form. In Struts, an action has to store a bean as a HttpServletRequest. In Tapestry, the page provides an accessor method that exposes the business objects to the components on the page.
Tapestry does much more work for you when the form is submitted. Notice that you don't specify a URL, action, page or anything with a Form component, you simply tell the Form component what method to invoke when the form is submitted.
The form components will pull request parameters, convert the parameters to correct Java types, and apply changes to the properties of the business object. If you are using the validating text field component, then more conversions and validations occur, automatically (and properties are only updated if the input is valid).
Once all the properties have been set, the Form will invoke the listener method which carries things forward from there, including selecting which page will render the response.
On something like a login page (i.e., user name and password), you don't need a seperate business object; your form components can simply update corresponding properties of the page object itself.
Right there is one of the big differences; the objects Tapestry users work on are stateful, not stateless. You don't have to deal with that problematic indirection (storing everything as request or session attributes). Tapestry does the shuffling of data to and from the session for you, invisibly. It uses object pooling so that you code naturally (objects with methods and properties) without worrying about multi-threading issues.
Now, that's just off the top of my head and doesn't scratch the surface of what Tapestry can do. The important thing is that its all about components, and creating new components (and even packaging them into libraries of components) is a snap, in fact its often a necessary and natural part of creating an application.
Unlike taglibs, Tapestry components can (and usually do), have their own templates and often are constructed from other components. Very natural, much more like a Swing GUI in terms of composition.
Because all of the request dispatching is performed by the framework (both during render, when the framework creates URLs, and in subsequent requests, when the framework interprets those same URLs), components can have thier own private listeners and behaviors.
Thus you can have things like MindBridge's Table component, that has sortable column headings. The links for the headings are components embedded within the Table component, and the Table component provides the listeners for those links. You can have ten Table components on ten different pages, or ten on the same page and everything just works, no questions asked.
Everything in Tapestry is designed to assist the developer ... wringing more functionality out of less effort. When things go wrong, it has incredible exception reporting.
Right now we're working on release 2.4 which includes significant improvements that will make Tapestry the easiest (and still, most powerful) web app framework available.
There's reams of documentation at the Tapestry Home Page [sf.net] and you might just want to check it out (if you want something more coherent).
Re:Tapestry and Struts (Score:2)
ok folks (Score:2, Insightful)
"web-work is monkey-work"
"web-work is not amazing"
"web-work takes a pea sized brain"
i should know - i do web work. because it pays.
because some bunch of fools decided to pay me for
it does not make it clever. because some bunch of
fools decided to pay You for it definitely doesn't
make it clever. step back and look at what you
do and then tell yourself there is anything
remotely complex in there. there isn't. its
crap. its not scottish its crap. quit selling
me books about crap. quit pushing your crap on
everyone else. crap crap crap crap crap.
Re:ok folks (Score:2, Insightful)
Lucky for us, most of web application development isn't web work -- it's application development. So we're not so crapful after all.
MVC... (Score:2)
Is it just me...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is there something more here?
Sometimes I think Java, OO and other development technologies are like grammer school teachers hovering over our heads saying, "Now, we *know* you are going to be sloppy if left on your own, so are going box you in so that you CAN'T do those sloppy things."
Except that you still can. VERY easy to understand and maintain applications can be coding procedual languages. VERY difficult to understand and maintain applications can be written in OO languages.
But I digress... by nature.
Re:Is it just me...? (Score:1)
MVC is an abstract concept, struts is one implementation. Is there an implementation for Perl? maybe those GNU folks need to get started on their own MVC implementation. Afterall, they don't seem to like any implementation they can't kontrol
Re:Is it just me...? (Score:2)
Yes. That is indeed largely their purpose. I don't see how that's a bad thing given that you almost always develop with people who have varying degrees of discipline when it comes to sticking with good coding practices. Some (like me, honestly) are damn near fanatical when it comes to sticking to plan. Others don't care as much, so long as the job gets done.
Sometimes I think Java, OO and other development technologies are like grammer school teachers hovering over our heads saying, "Now, we *know* you are going to be sloppy if left on your own, so are going box you in so that you CAN'T do those sloppy things." Except that you still can. VERY easy to understand and maintain applications can be coding procedual languages. VERY difficult to understand and maintain applications can be written in OO languages.
I think that both cases depend upon the quality of the code(r), and what you personally prefer. I tend to find OO solutions more elegant and easier to maintain, whereas it has been my experience that with functional languages it is dangerously easy to wind up with an unmaintainable and barely understandable mass of spaghetti code. This is especially true whenever time begins to run out and deadlines approach: people freak out and start slapping out code that they would normally be embarrased about. Having a structure like Struts in place helps to keep this from happening.
This is not to say, of course, that people don't make classes that are nothing more than a series of
methods, and that wind up behaving exactly like the procedural languages. In any language worth it's salt it will be possible to code both well and badly.Re:Is it just me...? (Score:1)
2. Traditional CGI programming, little scripts here and there making web-pages, is REALLY REALLY exhausting to make MVC. It is definitely possible, but Cocoon and Struts make it MUCH easier.
3. Finally, one sentiment that keeps coming up is: ok, so I trade doing it 'well' the old way and working my butt-off OR I work my butt-off learning the frawework to do it the new way. I think this is mistaken. My experience is that when good programmers encounter good frameworks, they can intuit their way around fairly quickly.
Personally, Cocoon and Struts were like a cold drink of water and made me feel less alone in the desert.
What's not so good? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hm. I'm not quite sure I follow you here. I haven't read the book, only your review, and I'm a bit puzzled by your statement regarding business objects in actions.
Is it so that the example code for the actions contain business logic directly, or do they use business objects without wrapping them in controllers (like a session bean)
If they're using session beans or controllers in the actions, I can perfectly understand that. You have to use the business logic somewhere.
On my current project, we have a (yuck) flash-client (using macromedia's Flash Remoting MX, btw. nice thing, saves a lot of time usually spent on devicing your own xml-based protocol to communicate with the flash client) . The flash client accesses a standard java class/bean. This bean contains code to massage the output from a session bean to simple data structures more suitable for a flash client (and programmer. Ok, low blow.
The session bean acts as an facade to all the functionality required by/provided to the client (authentication, fetching and updating data etc.) The system has about 10 session beans and quite a few entities.
We've used this approach before, and when we had to add some new types of clients, we only have to add a bean convert to/from client requests and the controller (session bean).
(At first, we only developed a Flash client. Later, we added a SMS client and a web client.)
Re:What's not so good? (Score:1)
I've not seen the offending code either, but I think I understand the nitpick.
In a prestine MVC environment, the business objects (the Model layer) should never be exposed to or by the view or controller layers. In other words, BusinessObjectA should never be used directly by ActionHandlerB, but rather use things like contracts and lightweight objects to seperate their concerns.
Problem is that setting up lightweight objects and contracts confuses the issue at hand in sample code. With all the infrastructure needed to keep your MVC structure prestine, the point of the example gets lost in the noise.
I would probably defend the author's decision to break the model a little to improve clarity, rather than have pages and pages of infrastructure simply to keep the MVC infrastructure completely spotless.
Struts 1.1 (Score:1)
Struts 1.1 has added nice features like Dynamic Action Forms, integration with JAAS for request level authorization, and separation of functionality through modules.
If you have not previously used Struts this may not mean anything to you. Trust me when I tell you that these advances will be very welcomed by Struts users. I higly reccomend learning Struts, however the existing books only cover previous versions. If you are looking into using Struts on a future project you may want to check out the upcoming release.
Life is like an elevator, sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft.
Re:Struts 1.1 (Score:1)
Both Kevin and I are committed to keeping the errata on www.strutskickstart.com up to date with the release as it heads toward final.
James
Husted book (Score:1, Informative)
One thing I like is that the publisher, Manning Publications [manning.com], lets you buy a PDF version of the book for half price. They will also deduct the cost of the PDF version if you decide to buy the tree version later. There are a couple of sample chapters [manning.com] online, one about integration with Tiles and another about validation. The sample chapters I have read seem very complete and well-written.
I know this post sounds like an advert for the book, but I'm not associated with the book in any way. I'm just a Struts developer who's been waiting for a good Struts book to come along, and the Husted book looks like it might be the one.
Re:Husted book (Score:1)
looks like the abstration in asp.net (Score:2, Insightful)
it's a big step forward cleaning up web programming. i'm sure it will come to php sooner or later, although i'm happy with old stylee.
Re:looks like the abstration in asp.net (Score:2)
If you're not committed yet, check out XMLC. (Score:2)
XMLC enforces a nice clean seperation of code and presentation data and has a great framework (Barracuda) that does everything Struts does and more. (polymorphic event dispatch and real OO event handling, for example)
Check it out at www.enhydra.org [enhydra.org]. There's also a great book out on XMLC, if you prefer paper.
Re:If you're not committed yet, check out XMLC. (Score:1)
Re:If you're not committed yet, check out XMLC. (Score:1)
I do agree with you about JSP. I preach to our team that anything you do with javascript or scriptlets can be done with a custom JSP tag, but in the end it just comes up short and we end up writing script or generating it. Either way I'd rather not do it.
similar to CSS? (Score:2)
Would this analogy be reasonably accurate?
Struts : web apps as Cascading Style Sheets : HTML ?
Re:similar to CSS? (Score:2)
With Perl/CGI + (X)HTML + CSS, you very likely are coding in a procedural style (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong -- or, just don't take it personally, let me explain the idea) in your CGI script. With Struts + (Tomcat or other servlet container) + JSP + HTML + CSS, well, things get more complicated -- yet easier to code and maintain.
With just Tomcat + JSP, you can code up a servlet, the Java equivalent of
So, if you have an application that isn't throw-away, one that will need to be maintained and possibly changed later, Struts makes building the application easier because it keeps unrelated parts from bumping into each other, and has lots of pre-fabbed goodies.
XSP vs. JSP?? (Score:1)
I've been thinking about learning JSP for web development but recently I've started looking at Apache Cocoon which is an XML framework, built on java. It uses XSP to call java business logic which then gets rendered in html. This looks very similar to JSP (except for the XML stuff).
Re:XSP vs. JSP?? (Score:1)
ASP and JSP, so called embedded languages, allowed developers to install dynamic elements in an otherwise static page. A step forward in the division of labor and code re-use; developer A submits the 'date & time' tag or fragment to the HTML designer and, voila, date and time is stamped into the page or some database output or whatever.
Problem: because the page would then dump to the browser, the JSP or ASP tags were also responsible for their 'chunk' of presentation. We've learned that this 'mixing' of controller and view or data and presentation is inflexible, but sometimes expedient and easy to explain.
Answers: Cocoon and Struts are strong in 'separation of concerns' or the breaking apart of the data-model, the presentation or view of data, and the controller that binds the two.
Cocoon begins by generating content via 'generators' and xsp tags which merely create xml data. This xml is later styled into something pretty. If you don't like the presentation, you can always adjust the style. If the data source changes, just adjust the generator or revise the xsp.
Cocoon is strongest in content intensive endeavors, like catalogs and magazines, blogs and so forth.
If the need is to build something implicity dynamic, a real web-based application with a high degree of interactivity and non-determined and perhaps customized presenations, struts may be your answer. Think of porting one of your favorite apps, maybe an enterprise e-mail/scheduling system or shop-floor planning application, to the web. Struts is very strong here and 'plays' very well with other EJB based 'models' and 'controllers' in the enterprise.
HTH!
Struts ported to PHP (Score:2, Interesting)
Just more retreading on the same tire... (Score:2, Insightful)
Struts, Java Server Faces, Servlets... All of these tools do not solve a real issue at hand, which is that when it comes to internet/HTML applications, the presentation layer should not tie you to any language, or to any language-specific framework.
I should be able to write a "View" that simply Looks at a standard XML-based model, and construct my page from that. Without having to put any kind of Java or Java-based tags in my code. XSLT comes far in doing that, but has a few shortcomings.
The missing piece is a standardized interface upon which posts/gets etc... can be performed without regard to the View, or to the language used in the application server. This interface should of course handle necessary things such as session management, authentication, and the like. This way, we could change out our underlying backend without having to change the presentation code at all.
This is where I give CORBA a lot of props. It definitely had some problems, but it was a wonderful intermediate interface that didn't care who its client was. As long as the client spoke IIOP... life was good.
The same should be done for web interfaces. The presentation layer should not care beans about the backend... expect that the container is aware of a common/neutral interface. No vendor specific tags. No language-specific tags. No proprietary garbage that ties you to any particular container.
XML, XSLT, XSD are great. Java is great. All these technologies are great. But the lack of a common interface/framework which seamlessly ties them together for web applications is the real problem.
Business Object Persistance and Caching (Score:1)
Re:Business Object Persistance and Caching (Score:1)
which java where? (Score:2)
1) struts
2) tomcat/jetty
3) EJB (jboss/resin)
4) enhydra
So, what can be used with what? Can #1-#3 be all used together? I mostly just want to gain wide experience to help the old resume.
Re:which java where? (Score:2)
Re:which java where? (Score:2)
2. Tomcat and Jetty are servlet engines.
3. EJBs are used for writing applications which *need* to be distributed or need to be buzzword compliant.
4. dunno
Tom
The problem with web development in java (Score:2)
Re:The problem with web development in java (Score:2)
Try Tapestry (Score:2)
This is *much* nicer than struts/JSP. It makes producing reuseable components much easier, and abstracts servlets very nicely, while still allowing access to the bare meal if needed. And it has the best documentation of any OSS project I've seen!
Tom
Struts is great for newbies too... (Score:1)
For all those who have never tried out the struts framework- give it a chance... and you don't need a $50 book to try it out. Try out Ted's Tutorials and learn through example!
www.startvino.com [startvino.com]
Re:Struts is GARBAGE (Score:4, Informative)
1. you are no longer 'the man' and the mgmt rolls in the html guy(s)/gal(s). most html people can deal with <xml style markup> than <%java scriptlet%> stlye <%blocks%> (i won't even get into logic flow in scriptlet blocks). separation of presentation logic from biz logic; speaks for itself. and it's possible with scripting languages, but tough.
2. you want to extend the app. 'oh, but marketing want's to have their server also come in on that url that you did last year'. true, you could accomplish extension well with scripting language, but the delegation with struts/MVC us much cleaner and more maintainable.
3. you want to debug/qa. struts is tested and kid approved. i'm going thru something right now where our system has bugs and no one really knows cuz different people have worked on each others code and did everything differently. and even on a huge project in the past i had done, it was still hard for me to figure out flows and such when they were scripted from page to page. a unified framework helps resolve those differences in coding and thusly, easier to debug.
And I'm sure there's even more things that I haven't listed. One issue to really consider is do you want a page to page thing - which is good for proof of concept, quick and dirty. Or do you want something you can live with for the next year or so? Using a framework like struts will make your long term much easier.
For the biggest project I worked on, a major airline portal, we rolled our own MVC framework. This was prior to struts and yet in the end, the code was very similar. Their system runs on over 100 Sun CPUs and has been cranking away since they launched a few years back, without a major crash or anything.
This stuff does work and the bigger the project, the better. It's a little tough to get in the beginning, but after you implement it, you start to see that it makes sense. I feel tho, it's definitely more of an 'enterprise' thing than a small 20 page site; altho, u could use it for a small site if you wanted, no problem.